Cognition can be described as a mental process that includes the ability to memory, attention, learning, perception, action, problem solving and mental imagery.
Cognitive dysfunctions are characterized clinically by progressive loss of memory, cognition, reasoning, judgment and emotional stability that gradually leads to profound mental deterioration and ultimately death. Among these diseases, Alzheimer's disease is considered as the most common and is believed to represent the fourth most common medical cause of death in the United States.
Cognitive ability may decline as a normal consequence of aging. A significant population of elderly adults experiences a decline in cognitive ability that exceeds what is typical in normal aging. Such age-related loss of cognitive function is characterized clinically by progressive loss of memory, cognition, reasoning, and judgment. Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), Age-Associated Memory Impairment (AAMI), Age-Related Cognitive Decline (ARCD) or similar clinical groupings are among those related to such age-related loss of cognitive function.
Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and involves synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.
A method of inducing a learning ability is desirable and can provide an important advantage in term of reaching superior brainpower, mental capacity, the ability to comprehend and/or to understand and profit from experience.
Human learning occurs as part of education, personal development, or training. It may be goal-oriented and may be aided by motivation. The study of how learning occurs is part of neurobiology, neuropsychology, educational psychology, learning theory, and pedagogy.
Learning can occur as a result of habituation, classical conditioning, operant conditioning and higher order forms learning, such as rule learning (defined as the ability to extract generalizable rules from specific experiences) and learning set (defined as a readiness or predisposition to learn developed from previous learning experiences, as when an organism learns to solve each successive problem of equal or increasing difficulty in fewer trials, seen in many animal species, or as a result of more complex activities such as play. Learning is not exclusively dependent on conscious awareness.
Learning is the process by which new information is acquired; memory is the process by which that knowledge is retained. Memory can be divided into two types: 1) Explicit memory is the conscious acquisition of knowledge about people, places and things. It occurs in the highly developed vertebrate brain, mainly in the diencephalic structure. 2) Implicit memory is the non conscious learning of motor skills and other tasks. It does not depend on the temporal lobe, but involves the sensory, motor associated pathways in the expression of the learning process. This type of memory can be studied in higher invertebrates whereas explicit learning is only studied in mammals.
Two areas of great interest are: the actual mechanism of learning and the process of consolidation which relates to how something that is learned is then stored as memory. The mechanisms underlying learning in the mammalian brain have been first elucidated by the concept of long term potentiation and in later by describing single cell modifications that accompany learning.
The actual mechanism of learning includes modulation of synaptic strength. Most of the effort made thus far to explore the cellular bases of learning and memory is in the frame of studying the long term potentiation (LTP) phenomenon. LTP is an artificial experimental model, in which long lasting increase in synaptic effectiveness is induced high frequency of stimulation of afferent fibers. Although long term potentiation occurs throughout the nervous system, its focus has mainly been in the hippocampus which is involved in the formation of certain memories. Characteristics of long term potentiation are associated with memory storage. Thus far, it has been shown that artificial induction of long term potentiation has no clear effect on learning.
Memory storage seems to be influenced by the strength and structure of synaptic connections. Long term memory, lasts for days, weeks and is associated with the growth of new synaptic connections activated by altered gene expression and de-novo protein synthesis.
There is an unmeet need for methods and compositions for improving cognitive function of a subject, including but not limited to, enhancing the learning and memory ability of a subject.